The following are excerpts from the letters of John Thomas (1847-1871). As the only Latter-day Saint apologist (at least to my knowledge) who has studied Christadelphianism (cf. Listing of Articles on Christadelphian Issues), I found the following to be of interest:
John Thomas on re-baptism and baptism being
valid being contingent upon the knowledge of the baptizand
You all know what my
practice has been. When I came to understand the things of the kingdom and name
of Jesus, in other words, the gospel, some fifteen years after an immersion in
times of ignorance, I was immersed again. Not that I believed a plurality of
immersions is necessary for one baptism. I believe no such thing; but this I do
regard as a self-evident truth, that it is an intelligent, docile and humble
appreciation of the gospel of the kingdom in the name of Jesus as the Christ
before immersion that constitutes said immersion the one baptism, or obedience
to faith. How can an immersion be “obedience to the faith”
while the subject is ignorant of ‘the faith’? It is the faith which justifies,
but it justifies in the act of union to the name: still it is the faith, and
not the uniting, which is counted to us for righteousness.
No one should “go to the
water every time they receive a little fresh light.” But Baptistism
and Campbellism are neither of them light, nor the light. . . . (John Thomas, Letter to Benjamin Wilson, March
1851, repr. In Defense of a Biblical Faith (1847-1871): The Letters of Dr. John
Thomas, Christadelphian Pioneer, ed. Reg Carr [Birmingham: The Christadelphian,
2025], 85)
Christadelphians Affirming the Existence of “Satan”
and Not Believing Jesus is a “mere man”:
Satan has been at work among
the sons of the Deity and brethren of Christ in all these places, sowing his tares
according to his practice of old time. His weapons are misrepresentation and
falsehood. He has deceived a few weak-minded and ignorant professors, “by good
words and fair speeches”, but I think they have reached the end of their chain.
The following are some of the follies into which he has seduced the: . . . Jesus
was no more divine than any other man: he was chosen because of his goodness,
and some plainly say that Gabriel was his father; . . . (John Thomas, Letter to
Robert Roberts, September 8, 1868, repr. In Defense of a Biblical Faith
(1847-1871): The Letters of Dr. John Thomas, Christadelphian Pioneer, ed.
Reg Carr [Birmingham: The Christadelphian, 2025], 168-69)
Again, he says that Christadelphianism
teaches that “the Lord Jesus Christ is but a man”: that is, nothing more divine
than Peter, or his pretended vicar in Rome! Now this is another false accusation.
I teach that Jesus Christ, when upon earth, was Deity manifested in sinful
flesh for the condemnation of sin, in the nature that sinned in Eden (Romans
8:3); but that after he was “perfected” (Luke 13:32), or “justified in spirit”
(1 Timothy 3:16), he became Deity manifested in glorified humanity, “who is
over all God blessed for the aions” (Romans 9:5). Is this teaching that “Jesus
Christ is but a man?” Is this element of Christadelphianism a lie, or will Mr.
Warer date to affirm that “it is of the devil”? . . .
Lastly, Christadelphianism
does not teach that “the devil has no existence whatever”. In saying this, Mr.
Water again “bears false witness against his neighbour”, which he is forbidden
to do. Christadelphians do not believe in the Romish and Protestant devil,
which is the old devil of pagan fable, incorporated into clerical and ministerial
divinity. Such a devil is a mere fiction of an intoxicated imagination, a
nonentity as fabulous as the god, soul, gospel, heaven, and hell of the
apostasy—a god without body and parts; a soul that is nothing; a gospel to cure
a nonentity; a heaven beyond the bounds of space, which is nowhere; a
fictitious devil to torment the wicked because they are not good; and ah ell
they know not where, [these] are the constituents of a system: “the strong
delusion sent of God upon men that they should believe a lie, that they all
might be damned who believe not the truth, but have a pleasure in the
unrighteousness” of the apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12). This is the system
in whole and part against which Christadelphianism is the most active,
indefatigable, efficient, and formidable protest extant.
Christadelphianism teaches
that there is a devil, and that it is sin incarnate styled by Paul kath hyperbole
amartolos, ‘an exceedingly great sinner’ (Romans 7:13). It is that that
hath the power, or sting of death. He says that the Devil manifested Himslef in
flesh and blood to destroy the devil (Hebrews 2:14) and the works of the devil
(1 John 3:8). The devil is therefore not immortal, because flesh and blood are
not immortal. The governments of the world in all their civil and
ecclesiastical relations are “the old serpent the devil and Satan” and his
angels, made for capture and destruction in the day of evil, which is at hand .
Every unpardoned sinner is an individual and personal devil, because the
natural father of all such is the devil (John 8:33). Mr. Warner, belonging to
this party, we need not be surprised that the true God paid no respect to his earnest
entreaty; and that he should declare that “Christadelphianism is a lie”.
Belonging to Satan, of course, the spirit of the Satna is in him; and this is
enmity to the truth and all its faithful adherents and advocates. (John Thomas,
Letter to the Inhabits of Mumbles and the Neighbourhood, August 22, `869, repr.
In Defense of a Biblical Faith (1847-1871): The Letters of Dr. John Thomas,
Christadelphian Pioneer, ed. Reg Carr [Birmingham: The Christadelphian,
2025], 187, 188-89)
John Thomas on the nature of Jesus and his “pre-existence”
(cf. the comments in the Birmingham [Amended] Statement of Faith about Jesus
not possessing “clean flesh,” etc.
Dear Bro. Roberts,
I do not know what
correction brother Donaldson and Harper proposed to brother Bingley, not being
present at their conversation. The objection to Proposition XX turns upon the
phrase “Jesus Christ,” and the notion that “Christ”, whose spirit was in the
prophets, “had no existence before the birth of Jesus, except as a purpose”,
&c. This confounds all distinctions between Deity and flesh. Deity is “very
God”. Christ the Word, who “in the beginning laid the foundations of the earth”,
therefore pre-existed before the birth of “the body prepared” of the substance
of Mary, and which lay dead in the tomb. That body, named Jesus, had no
existence until developed by the Christ-Power. Federally, indeed, it
pre-existed in the loins of Abraham and in Adam, as Levi was in Abraham, and we
in Adam, before birth; but not otherwise. The pre-existent Christ, or Deity,
was not the less Deity because he veiled himself in flesh, in our “sinful flesh”,
or “sin’s flesh”, and styled himself Jesus, or he who
shall be Saviour. The cause of all current confusion of ideas upon this “great
mystery” is men working out their conclusions as the Jews did of old: their
sole rule of interpretation is the flesh. “Ye judge after the flesh”, which the
Christ-Spirit saith “profits nothing.” They see nothing but the flesh in Jesus
Christ, on the one hand; and nothing but and immaculate or spotless flesh, on
the other. Both these belligerent parties are wrong. They are contended knights
viewing opposite sides of the shield. If one side of the shield be black, and
the other side white, what is the colour of the shield? Jesus Christ in the day
of his weakness, had two sides—the one, Deity; the other, Man:
the Eternal Christ-Power veiled in, and manifested through the flesh created
from the ground; which flesh had wantonly transgressed the Divine Law, the
penalty of which sent it back into the dust from whence it came. This is Jesus
Christ the true Deity, whom to know is life eternal. This flesh which inhabited
Paradise, like all the beasts, “very good” of its sort, is styled “sin” and “sin’s
flesh”, because it sinned or transgressed the Eden law. Our flesh is the same
as Adam’s before he sinned, only the worse for wear: for Paul says that we
sinned in him, and he was sinless before he sinned; and we were as much in his
loins when he was sinless, as in the act of sinning. His flesh undefiled by sin
is constitutionally the same as the flesh of his posterity defiled legally
thereby. The Christ-Deity vailed himself in the Adamic nature defiled by sin,
in order that he might condemn sin to death in the nature which, though that he
might condemn sin to death in the nature which, though created “very good”, had
legally defiled itself by transgression of the Eden law. This purpose would
have been defeated if he had veiled himself in a clean nature. To say that the
Man, Jesus, was corporeally clean, or pure, holy, spotless, and undefiled, is
in effect to say that he was not “made of a woman”; for Scripture teaches that
nothing born of a woman can possibly be clean: but it is credibly testified
that he was “born of a woman”; he must therefore necessarily have been born corporeally
unclean. Hence, it is written of him in Psalm 51:5, “I was shapen in iniquity;
and in sin did my mother conceive me”. He therefore prays, “Purge me with hyssop
and I shall be clean; was me, and I shall be whiter than snow”. This prayer has
been answered, and he has been “Washed thoroughly from his (corporeal)
iniquity, and cleansed from his sin”; so that now he has a clean nature, which
is spirit and divine—“the Lord the Spirit”—once dead as to flesh, but now alive
as Spirit for evermore (Revelation 1:18). “This is”, as Paul saith, “a great
mystery”, which those who are “wise and prudent” as opposed to “babes and sucklings”,
out of whose mouth the Deity hath ordained and perfected praise, are not able to
understand. I would propose that all your readers consent to stop disputing
about “the nature and pre-existence of Christ” for the next twelve months, and
apply themselves to the study of the subject as revealed in Moses and the
prophets, and by Jesus, John, Peter, and Paul, in the spirit of little
children. (John Thomas, Letter to Robert Roberts, July 17, 1869, repr. In
Defense of a Biblical Faith (1847-1871): The Letters of Dr. John Thomas,
Christadelphian Pioneer, ed. Reg Carr [Birmingham: The Christadelphian,
2025], 176-78)
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